The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee (ACLU-TN), which last month successfully sued to obtain a federal court order requiring that the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department provide COVID protective measures to inmates at the county jail, filed a motion late Wednesday asking Judge Sheryl Halle Lipman to compel enforcement of her earlier order.
Announcing its action, ACLU-TN said, “the April 9th agreement was meant to ensure that medically vulnerable people living in the jail are sufficiently protected as long as COVID-19 threatens their health and safety. However, less than a week after the court approved the consent decree, the Sheriff’s Office informed the plaintiffs that they believed the protections negotiated under the settlement had terminated, without demonstrating that people living in the Shelby County Jail are adequately protected from COVID-19.”
Accordingly, the ACLU-TN asked the court to order that the sheriff:
• offer adequate educational materials and non-punitive incentives to increase the vaccination rate in the jail;
• provide sufficient socially-distanced out-of-cell time;
• prioritize and expedite release plans for detainees who can be released, and to increase the availability of pretrial release options
• make an effort to adopt the recommendations of the ventilation expert from this lawsuit
Lindsay Kee, director of strategic communications for ACLU-TN, added, “We also asked the court to clarify that its April 9th order does not terminate until a sufficient vaccine education effort has been made, sufficient and regular opportunities to receive the vaccine have been offered, and vaccines have been fully administered in accordance with CDC guidelines, including all doses and aftercare.”
